This just kills me.
Now, if one side of the dreidel always faced Mecca they’d have a trifecta of religious cluelessness.
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The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
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December 22nd, 2008 at 11:20 am
I know some Muslims who celebrate the secular aspects of Christmas. I’m sure there are Jewish children who look forward to Santa gifts.
That said, LOL.
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:24 am
Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel I made you out of clay
Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel with SANTA I will play???…just wrong
Thats like going to a deli to get a bagel and a schmer with a side of bacon
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:28 am
Like much of Christmas, Santa is pretty tenuously Christian. A Santa dreidel is about as oxymoronic as Christians getting gifts from Santa, or the “Christmas” tree, for that matter.
Remember, just because a symbol like Santa happens to be associated with a festival that Christians co-opted from others, doesn’t mean the they actually have anything to do with one another.
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:39 am
I think you (or really fail blog) are mixing up holiday tradition with religious tradition. That’s like calling Jingle Bells a Christian hymn. There’s no reason you can’t mix these secular parts up. And there’s now Major League Dreidel anyways: http://www.majorleaguedreidel.com/
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:45 am
Ahhh, all the wonderful Winter Solstice silliness that ensues from a mish mash of thousands of made up stories. The best part is eating good food, giving/getting presents, and a few extra days off work!
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:46 am
Oy vey!
Time to play Adam Sandler’s Hannukah Song again – you know, the one which says “OJ Simpson – NOT a Jew!”
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:50 am
“Like much of Christmas, Santa is pretty tenuously Christian.”
True because the history of Christmas dates back at least4000 years. Many Christmas traditions were celebrated centuries before the Christ child was supposedly born. The Twelve Days of Christmas, the yule log, the giving of gifts, carnivals(parades) with floats, carolers who sing while going from house to house, the holiday feasts, and the church processions can all be traced back to the early Mesopotamians. Each year nearly at the Winter Solstice it was believed that the Mesopotamiam god-figure Marduk would do battle with the monsters of chaos.
To assist Marduk in his struggle the Mesopotamians held a festival for the New Year. This was Zagmuk, the New Year’s festival that lasted for 12 days.
The Romans continued the tradition later with their holiday Saturnalia, which evolved into a spectacle of huge public orgies and feasts. Nothing says the holidays like sex with multiple strangers with a stop by the Vomitarium on the way home, I suppose, but they did deck their halls with decorations and special trees.
Naturally, as Christianity began to spread through the Empire, Christian leaders weren’t so charmed by Saturnalia shenanigans and thus they tried to ban the holiday, but as early as 98 CE solemn feasts commemorating the supposed birth of the Christ began to take replace Saturnalia and by 400 CE the date was moved to 12/25.
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:56 am
I was thinking Mohammed on a Dreidel wearing a Santa hat.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Santa Claus hates jewish kids:
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I’d say that this is a toy for those kids who celebrate Christmukkah.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I wish we could see more of that image. Those look like the children at the appearance at Fatima, kneeling before Santa. I could imagine replacing the “Gimel” (where the player takes the entire pot) with Santa’s face, though that would change the message (I think) to “A great Santa happened there.”
e=mc hammer, you certainly would want to go to the vomitorium on your way home from any orgy held at an arena. You may want to look up what a “vomitorium” actually is. (Vomiting in one is pretty much discouraged.)
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Sounds perfect for my girlfriend’s family. They love pretending to be Jewish while still adhering to Christianity. I think they see it as “appreciating the Jewish roots of Christianity” or something.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Hehe, looks like you’re watching the same websites as i do…
Farker … check.
XKCD … check.
Fail blog … check.
The “normal” astronomy sites … for sure.
Let’s try some more: Cectic? Engrish funny? Perry Bible Fellowship? Maybe bash.org or The Internet Oracle? Damn, that’s my daily program too!
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Following the dietary dictates of a Bronze Age Sky God is not a particularly compelling reason to not eat the ham and bagel sandwich I brought for lunch…..
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:08 pm
To be fair, the text at Archie McPhee (the most marvelous purveyor of crap in the universe, NAYY) says “Sure to confound and confuse both Jews and Gentiles! ” They also recommend as a related item the Gefilte Fish plaque (http://www.mcphee.com/items/M5514.html), so I think it likely they fully understand the irony.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Seeing as Hanukkah is more of a historical holiday then a religious one, we get to just sit back and laugh quietly to ourselves abo9ut all this silliness surrounding the intersecting dates.
That being said: *Facepalm*
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Uh, sorry, but what’s a dreidel?
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Geez!! Did everybody’s irony gland freeze off?
I bought several of these little items in Boo Radley’s– a great shop in Spokane specializing in the weird, offensive, bizarro and caliban gifts snd goodies. Want Titanic/iceberg ice cube trays? Boo’s has ‘em. “Jesus Saves Bank?” Check! “Buddy Christ bobble heads?” Got ‘em! Praying Hands or Virgin Mary toast stamps? Pirate toast stamps? Edward Gorey books?. Bettie Paige magnets and tin lunch boxes? Yep!
Archie McPhee’s in Seattle is bigger and has online sales. Great place for that very special something. Acoutrements, the maker, knew exactly what they were doing.
Here is another and, I think funner take on the old dreidel game: Texas No Limit! http://www.texasdreidel.com/
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
” if one side of the dreidel always faced Mecca”
Not that I’m entirely sure what Dreidels are for, but if it’s a game of chance, that ‘miracle’ would certainly be cause for accusations of cheating.
On the subject of Santa.
Happy Monkey, all!
December 22nd, 2008 at 3:49 pm
IVAN3MAN, if you want to see a really funny mix between the two religions, click my name. (But be careful, not for children or the faint-hearted.)
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Pieter Kok, thanks for that! Man, I really like black humour, but I don’t think that Christians would appreciate it!
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I WANT ONE XD (Born and raised Jewish, currently celebrating secular!Christmas because it’s FUN, dammit.)
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Thats like going to a deli to get a bagel and a schmer with a side of bacon
mmmm Yum Bacon makes everything yummy
December 23rd, 2008 at 12:07 am
Happy ‘Sol Invictus’ everyone! I’ll celebrate the old-fashioned Roman traditions this year – & there’re even astronomical!
Any saucy young virgins wanna come get sacrificed at my place?
December 23rd, 2008 at 12:12 am
Wow, I can’t believe some people here don’t get what a dreidel is for. It’s a game played by kids (and adults I suppose) of chance during the Chanukah celebrations, kind of like rolling dice for money. If you think Santa and Chunakah mix, then perhaps you need to look up what the Jewish festival is all about. This is most definitely a failed understanding of both holidays.
(Having said that, it is rather funny)
December 23rd, 2008 at 12:16 am
Xmas is what you make of it anyway – the religion went out of it ages ago for those that choose not to beleive in that guff.
Its as secular – or as religious as folks want to make it.
Renaming Xmas to Solstice would be nice but a bit too much of a hassle really.
It started as saturnalia /Sol Invictus then morphed through the ages picking up bitsof piecs of various cultural traditions and religious appropriation attempts – plus corporate advertising along the way.
As for Jewish customs – well bacon and pork are delicious, and Jewish customs seem pretty gosh-durned * dumb * to me. IMHON.
Story goes that when Moses came from Mt Sinai mountain Aaron had to ask him to repeat the deal a few times :
“So tell me again Moses, the Arabs get all the oil & we have to cut the ends off our WHAT!”
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:11 am
Well, unlike YHWH, there’s at least *some* evidence for Santa Claus, what with all the presents and half-eaten cookies and such.
December 23rd, 2008 at 7:07 am
@Robert Brown, gss, etc.
True. Plus, in a Jewish household, one point of the dreidel was to have the kids make one, not buy one. But the dreidel is the mixing of cultures and traditions and secularity anyway; i.e. life in the USA.
Rabbi David Golinkin comments:
The dreidel represents an irony of our history. In order to celebrate the holiday of Hanukkah, which celebrates our victory over cultural assimilation, we play the dreidel game, which is an example of cultural assimilation!
mmmmmm…chocolate coins
blechhh…having that dumb song stuck in our heads all over again
@DirigibleDuck
“They love pretending to be Jewish while still adhering to Christianity.”
That sound kinda funny at first but it would have been the case for the earliest xtians.
@Danniel B. Says
“Seeing as Hanukkah is more of a historical holiday then a religious one”
This is, much the same, the case with most Jewish holidays.
One chief difference is “laws” vs. “customs”. The laws are rabbinical and come from the Torah. The customs are things that appeared in Judiac populations culturally, spread and stayed. There are backwards-engineered stories accompanying the dreidel, but it’s likely purely a toy: a cross between a top and a die.
December 23rd, 2008 at 8:27 am
David Hall:
What? No “Jesus Saves, Moses Invests” t-shirts?
December 23rd, 2008 at 8:56 am
^ Jesus saves with the kick-pad, Noah gathers the rebound, passes to Moses, over the red line, he shoots, he SCOOOOOOOOORES!”
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:05 am
THX Pieter Kok – that “timmy’s wish” thing was frakkin Classic!
Loved it! Esp. the lil Turin shroud ref! I nearly wet myself laughing!
Cheers!
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:46 am
“Timmy’s wish” was the winner of the 2002 Nihilist Film Festifal (held in the back of a Santa Monica bookstore on a Saturday night; what’s not to love about LA!).
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:55 am
Yep, I can understand why!
December 23rd, 2008 at 10:22 am
Here in Cheyenne there is a population of Jews who have become born-again Christians. They are always in the Christmas parade doing dances to traditional Jewish music while holding banners that say “Jews for Jesus” or some such. Maybe folks like them started this to embrace both cultures. Inclusion rather than exclusion works for me.
December 23rd, 2008 at 10:27 am
@ Pieter Kok:
I love the throwaway gag with the shroud of Turin image on the towel!
December 25th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Ken B Says:
What? No “Jesus Saves, Moses Invests” t-shirts?
I’ll have to mention that next time I go there. Maybe they’ll start carrying ‘em!
December 29th, 2008 at 12:44 am
Jesus saves, but Esposito scores on the rebound! (You had to a 1970 Broons fan …)